# birth

Pronunciation: say "BURTH" US /bɜɹθ/, UK /bɜːθ/

## Noun

1. The act or process of being born or of giving birth to a baby or young animal; also, one occurrence of this.
   - Simple: The time when a baby or young animal comes out of its mother's body.
   - _The doctor monitored the baby's heart rate throughout the birth._
   - _In most mammals, birth occurs after a long period of gestation._
3. The beginning or start of something; its point of origin.
   - Simple: The start or beginning of something new.
   - _The 1990s saw the birth of the modern internet._
   - _The meeting in her kitchen marked the birth of the town's first food bank._
6. The circumstances of a person's ancestry, social rank, or family background.
   - Simple: The family or social group a person is born into.
   - _She was of noble birth but chose to live modestly._
   - _Under the old system, birth counted for more than talent when officers were chosen._

## Verb

2. To bear a child or other young, or to help deliver one.
   - Simple: To bring a baby or young animal into the world.
   - _She birthed her first child in a small rural clinic._
   - _Many mammals birth their young in concealed dens._
4. To bring something into existence; to produce or give rise to it.
   - Simple: To create something or cause it to begin.
   - _The Enlightenment birthed modern ideas of individual liberty._
   - _Small online communities often birth slang that the rest of the internet picks up a year later._

## Adjective

5. Designating a family relationship established by biological childbirth rather than by adoption or marriage.
   - Simple: Used about relatives connected to you by birth, rather than by adoption or marriage.
   - _After the adoption, she still wondered about her birth parents._
   - _The court agreed that the birth mother could keep writing to the child once the adoption was final._

## Noun

7. Someone or something that has been born; offspring. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: Someone or something that has been born, such as a child or a young animal.
8. Obsolete spelling of berth. *(obsolete)* — Obsolete spelling of berth.
   - Simple: Obsolete spelling of berth. Found in old books for a bed on a ship, a ship's place in port, or a job.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3, 5–7** — From Middle English birthe (1250), earlier burthe, from Old Norse burðr, which replaced Old English ġebyrd. It goes back to Proto-Germanic *burdiz and ultimately to Proto-Indo-European *bʰŕ̥tis, from the root *bʰer- ("to carry, bear"); it is thus equivalent to bear + -th.
**Meanings 2, 4** — From Middle English birthen, derived from the noun birth.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/birth (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).